more mice

More mice pictures today.

This rather trusting fellow is sleeping. See the Z's?

Apparently he doesn't know what's in store for him. Actually he was in no danger on this particular day--I took the picture yesterday--because he hasn't exhibited any tumors yet. This line of mice is prone to tumors, and at a young age, and since we're testing a drug that shrinks the size of tumors--or so we hope--we need to use mice that already have tumors. Since this peacefully sleeping fellow is free of tumors we can't use him in the study. At least not yet.



The other picture is of the fellow that is running this study. He went to medical school in India and did his internship there also. He wanted me to take this picture of him so he could send it back to some of his friends from med school. He wanted his classmates to see that in the USA we took more precautions with the animals than we do with human patients in surgery. Funny but true. Just look at all the protective clothing---for the rodents protection, that is---we have to wear just to walk in a room with mice.

Yet another reason that episode of Life on Monday was so silly. You just can't have cages of rats or mice hanging out in a lab these days. There's a lot of laws and guidelines that are very seriously enforced to ensure the quality of life of our research subjects.

Not that I want to be a mouse, mind you. They tend to have short lives no matter how well we take care of them. Most rodents don't live longer than a couple of years in the wild. Mice, for example, can live a bit over 2 years in a lab but last only around 4 months on average in the wild. On the other hand, in their native environment mice don't have oddly garbed humans poking them in the belly with 100 ul or so of experimental chemotherapy drugs.

Comments

Unknown said…
Cute mouse, cute investigator (from what I can see).

Don't you research types have cages all over the place? Just in case you see a stray mouse on the loose? ;-)
3:18 PM
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